


ouroboros

by cosmya



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Consent Play, Dom/sub Undertones, Existential Crisis, F/F, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, Mile High Club, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Vaginal Fingering, season 2 finale spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmya/pseuds/cosmya
Summary: Eve acquiesces. With a little help, of course. Running away is the easy part.or, when you take a tragic scene and decide it's about time for some angsty femslash, then you spiral out of control and it turns into a full-on story. Rewrite of the very end of Season 2 where Villanelle gets her way.





	1. Chapter 1

_Has she changed - really, changed?_

 

_Have I done it?_

 

_No._

 

_No, I just coaxed it out of her. I showed her who she really was. I did her a favor._

  


 

We are outside. Rome is resplendent, and I feel alive. The sun isn’t hot, not this deep into February, but I can still see the sweat on Eve’s neck. It beads and mingles with the blood she’s spattered in. I never want her to rinse it off.

 

She shouts at me. I shout back.

 

She is still high from killing Raymond, I can tell, though I wish she wasn’t trying so hard to suppress it. I wonder if she knows that I’m feeding off of that high. (She probably does; I mean, look at me, I’m practically skipping.) It is so much more potent than when I do it. Or maybe I have done it so much that I have become desensitized. It makes me wonder, briefly, if it is time for a career change. Or perhaps that Eve and I can start doing this together. Bonnie and Clyde. I know she will want this feeling again soon.

 

But I am getting ahead of myself. She is still reeling, and I still need to get her down. And then we can move on.

 

It doesn’t matter what we say to one another. Me and Eve, it was never about words. She has said the most horrible things to me. But I know what she really means when she says them. And I know that she wants me to know. She is just too... embarrassed, too constrained, still, to say what she means.

 

So I wait for her. I retort as necessary. I know that she will come back to me. She always has.

 

But we don’t have so much time. Maybe I need to coax her again... It worked so well with Raymond. Eve is like a child sometimes. You put something away, and it doesn’t exist anymore.

 

I toss the gun into the empty fountain. I am safe. My hands are hers to hold.

 

She is momentarily speechless. She looks over to it, then to the tunnel we emerged from, making sure nobody is after us yet, then back to me. The change in her eyes is dramatic. The situation has shifted. It is not me versus her. It is us versus them.

 

It makes me want to cry. Then the birds watching us spread their wings and flee, leaving us alone.

 

Eve feels that she has regained some power. Her posture has changed; she is all stiff-backed, rigid as a board, her jaw set like she is about to suffer me to justice. But I see how she trembles. She needs somebody to hold her, to stroke her cheek and tell her that she is in over her head. That she is _confused._ She doesn’t really understand what power is. If she did, she would know that she _always_ had it over me. Justice or no justice.

 

“Eve. It’s okay,” I say, turning the sweetness up as high as it will go.

 

“It is _not_ okay! Do you even realize what you’ve done?” Her voice is stubbornly trying to convince me that she is still angry.

 

“Yes, of course-”

 

“You’ve doomed me, Villanelle! You have. Ruined. My. Life.” She exasperatedly punctuates the words with little shakes of her fists.

 

“Eve, Eve. Your life was ruined the first moment you thought of me.” I pause to let the sentiment sink in. I think it is working. “You were never going to get out of this alive.”

 

“Yeah, not after what you did-”

 

It is my turn to cut her off. I try to look as innocent as possible. “Don’t you understand what I am offering you? A way out. Your _only_ way out.”

 

“Is that a threat?” she asks. Always jumping to the worst conclusions.

 

“The world is a threat, Eve. They know who you are. You will know no peace until you are dead.” She tries to protest. “Or-”

 

“Or I run away with you. Captive forever with the woman who has utterly destroyed me.”

 

“You will be safe with me. Captive forever with the woman who entranced you beyond your wildest dreams. The one person in the world that you can bare your deepest soul to. It’s a simple choice. You’re logical.” I give her a few moments to sort through my offer. I hope she knows that I will give her everything.

 

My cheek twitches slightly as I realize that _that_ is _exactly_ what Aaron offered me. But that was different, right? Aaron didn’t love me. He didn’t understand me. He was a disgrace to-

 

“Okay,” Eve says, interrupting my disgust.

 

I slip. There is no hiding what is coming out of me. “Okay?” I’m mildly surprised when heart-eye emojis don’t pour from my mouth when I say it.

 

“Okay. It’s not like I’m going back to Nico.”

 

I bite my lip and frown and shake my head back and forth, but it is in a pitying way rather than a comical one. I don’t think she is ready to know what I did to him yet. It is probably better that she just forgets about him entirely.

 

What cuts my pity short, though - and makes me feel more happiness than I knew I was capable of - is that Eve does not look defeated. She had looked defeated before. I suppose it was because she was so caught up in thinking about how truly fucked she would be once the world figured out what she had done. But that look is gone.

 

In its place is faith.

 

It is because she has realized the truth. She beat the game, solved the puzzle, won the race. And it ended in a brick wall. She could not have broken it down without me. And now that we have found our escape, I am whisking her away on the romantic honeymoon.

 

She takes a final big breath, and then her face relaxes. I almost think I see a smile. So long she had tried to get inside my head. Now she is not only in it, she has become it. We are the same. Finally she has accepted that.

 

It is all I can do not to beckon her with a finger like some creepy old man. Instead, I smile at her and extend my hand ever so slightly. She walks slowly over to me and takes it. She was not lying. It is so sweaty that she could have just washed it.

 

“Where are we going?” she asks me. It sounds so intimate. My mind wanders to the places I want to go with her.

 

I chuckle. “We don’t have many options. I still think Alaska would be nice.”

 

“I can do Alaska.” She still won’t look in my eyes. The sun is setting, and it shines through the broken old columns and glints at her irises. She is opaque.

 

“Eve,” I whisper. “What is stopping you?”

 

Her lip trembles, and for a moment I worry that she still might run. But then she squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them and looks into mine and steels herself. “I was. But I’m going to stop.”

 

“You’re going to stop stopping yourself?”

 

“I’m going to stop pretending. Pretending that I want things to go back to the way they were before you.”

 

I am overcome. “Oh, Eve,” I manage to get out, and I wrap my arms around her and dig my face into her hair and she pulls me tighter and turns her head and her mouth is on mine and I think all of my dreams have come true.

  


 

As we kiss, I think about what it would feel like to stick a knife into her. To be the last thing she feels. I think she is thinking about doing the exact same thing to me.


	2. Chapter 2

It ends, and Eve looks dangerous. My mouth feels numb, deprived of the sensation she had alighted in it.

 

“Come on. Let’s go.” Our hands are still together, and she pulls me away from the empty fountain.

 

“My fingerprints-” I begin to protest. 

 

Eve looks back at me and nods, and then picks up the gun and scrubs it with her shirt before putting it in the waistband of her pants. 

 

“Do you have a plan?” It seems like she has a plan, by the way she is striding out of the ruins with such purpose. 

 

“Carolyn gave me an out. She’ll be alerted the moment I step foot inside an airport. She’s probably waiting for me at the gate to La Guardia, knowing her.”

 

We pass under an arch and are confronted with the horizon, the sun burning its edge yellow-bright. How I wish we could hitch a ride on it as it travels west. The ruins are atop a craggy hill and a hundred meters below us is a gnatty chain-link fence. We are exposed, but the city seems so quiet from up here. 

 

Eve descends carefully, much slower than I would be moving if I were not watching her. The fence is rimmed with barbed wire but the points are dull and neither of us mind a little scratch. Ahead, a cobblestone street struggles to stay level as itchy grass and the roots of olive trees spread underneath. I feel even more lost in time than I had in the ruins.

 

“So...” I say. I am keeping my distance, walking a bit behind her. I want her to feel control.

 

“So. Do you have a passport with you?”

 

I snort. “No. Don’t tell me you want to go back and get them.”

 

I see the side of Eve’s face contort as she smiles. “Flying might be a bit of a problem, then.”

 

“Are we going to sail over the ocean like in Titanic? Which one of us gets to be Leo?”

 

I think Eve wants to be mad at me for making jokes when I should be very serious and careful and scared, but I know she can’t resist me giving her what she needs. She shrugs. “I guess you can be Leo. It’s probably best for the world if you die first.”

 

“Hey!” I say, but inside I am just glad she is not upset anymore. 

 

Eve slows down a bit so we can walk together. “I think we will be okay as long as we don’t go where everyone is expecting us to go. We’ll just find the nearest regional airport... steal some passports... and then connect somewhere that’ll fly us to the US.”

 

“You. Want to steal.” I am impressed.

 

“No, I want you to steal for me.”

 

“Consider it done.” I have half a mind to rub my hands together like a villain in a children’s movie. I love it when Eve wants me to do bad things. “Does Ciampino work for you?”

 

She gives me a confused look. She really does not do her homework when she visits new places. And she berated me for not reading my files.

 

I continue and try not to make it sound like I think she’s an idiot. “It’s not very far. They only fly shitty airlines. I don’t think Carolyn will be on Ryanair.”

 

Eve nods. The chill in the air has picked up, and suddenly I wish I had a jacket to give to her. We decide to take the bus; the stop is only a ten minute walk. The speed at which we decided what to do makes me think that we would work well together, if she ever wanted to do that sort of work. 

 

As the sun sets, Eve grows silent again. I hope she is only confirming that this is the safest way out. Or maybe she is thinking about me. We sit and wait, and she looks over at me enough for me to think that I could be right.

 

The stink of exhaust precedes the bus arriving. The driver is frail and doesn’t speak English, and tells us that Ciampino will require seven transfers, as we are near the north side of town now. Surprising myself, I actually pay the fare for us. Maybe I am growing soft.

 

We take a seat near the back. Few are riding at this strange time of evening. Most have the testy glow of hunger mixed with the anxious buzziness of pre-drinks before a party. But nobody talks to us, and they don’t seem to notice the rust red stain on Eve’s shirt and my neck. 

 

Slowly, the bus pulls away, and I place my hand on Eve’s knee and feel her jittering. I’m not even trying to seduce her, I just want her to feel safe. Her fidgeting doesn’t stop until we reach the next station. Then we get off and get back on and repeat and repeat and repeat. The lights have all blurred and the air tastes bad. I want to be gone.

 

It worries me when I feel her nerves rubbing off on me. But maybe it is just sexual frustration. 

 

* * *

 

We arrive at Ciampino around three: the perfect hour to find drunk Londoners who aren’t too careful with their belongings. There is not an MI6 agent in sight in the dirty concrete behemoth structure they call departures.

 

Eve waits, watching, as I search for a target. It is gleefully easy for me to find someone who looks enough like me to not arouse the suspicion of the underpaid airport security workers. 

 

She is lounging on a bench outside departures with a raucous group of wannabe Instagram models. Joylessly I reach inside her Louis Vuitton purse, discarded on the pavement, and take what I need as she films herself finishing the bottle of peach vodka that her friends are passing around. Perhaps she will see a glimpse of me in the video when she awakes bleary eyed and hungover sometime this evening.

 

I return to Eve. “Wasn’t that a little risky?” she asks me.

  
“Oh, don’t be like that. She was a perfect match.”

 

“Her hair is a lot curlier than yours.”

 

“Don’t you own a flatiron?” It is good to hear her voice again, even if it is only to posit that I am not as good as I think I am. In fact, I am confident that I like her arguing with me more than I like her saying nothing at all.

 

The Instagram models were all too young to look like Eve, so we have to search a bit more to find another target. When we pass by them once more, Eve drops Konstantin’s gun into the girl’s purse. It is all I can do not to beam. It turns out that the only thing I like more than Eve encouraging me to be naughty is Eve being naughty herself.

 

We go up the stairs to arrivals and spot a short Asian woman with her Italian husband and several small children who look far too energetic for the hour waiting to be picked up. Eve says she’ll be good enough. It occurs to me that not long ago, she would’ve felt fabricated remorse for doing this sort of thing. And we are in  _ arrivals _ . I will have to ask Eve someday whether she simply thought this woman was the best mark or if she was trying to be kind. Or as kind as one can be while stealing and after having just planting a gun on an unsuspecting millennial.

 

I bump into the woman and her purse falls to the ground, her wallet, passport, tissues, cough drop wrappers, coins, and numerous children’s snacks scattering everywhere. Her husband is so sleepy that he doesn’t even offer to help. Asshole. I apologize profusely, and my sleeve is more than big enough to hide what I am taking. Which is, of course, the passport, but also a few snacks. Planes make me hungry.

 

Identities stolen, we head inside. The airport is sticky and dim. Carolyn would not be caught dead here.

 

In a haze, we buy tickets to Madrid and drift through security. I am positive that Eve’s silence now can be attributed to tiredness and hunger, not anger at me or at the situation we are in. There’s one twenty-four-hour cafe near our gate, so we sit at a mint green table. We order coffee and half the contents of a derelict pastry case. 

 

“Are you excited?” I ask. My foot bounces up and down at lightning speed underneath the table.

 

“I’m excited to get some rest.”

 

“And wake up in the morning, and this will all have been a dream?”

 

She smiles and takes the tiniest sip of coffee. “It’s not a dream.”

 

“It would be a very bad dream, wouldn’t it?” The wilted biscotti tastes almost as good as Eve had. But it only makes me hungrier for something better.

 

She just shakes her head back and forth. “It would be a very long dream. So unless I’m actually in a coma, this is really happening.”

 

“If you were in a coma, I would go wake you up. Like Sleeping Beauty.”

 

“How would we know each other if I had been in a coma this whole time?”

 

I wiggle my finger at her. “You got me there.”

 

“What if they do come after us?” She looks no different for the abrupt change in subject. Sometimes Eve is so inscrutable that even I can’t figure out how her brain is set up.

 

I don’t have an easy answer. If they come looking for us, they will find us. And if they find us, it is over. I have to trust in the fact that we are not important enough to matter anymore.

 

I bite my tongue. I can’t lie to Eve. I want to lie. I want to tell her that they will never find us, that they don’t care, that we can turn invisible and cease to exist to the world. I want to tell her that I actually have planted bombs and poisons and snipers to assassinate Carolyn and all the Twelve and everyone else who has ever threatened either of us. That I can single-handedly fix all her problems and she only needs to trade me her heart.

 

The scary part is that I don’t even wish any of that is true. Invulnerability breeds boredom. I can’t have Eve bored with me. I want her hanging on my every word because she is afraid that she cannot have me for much longer.

 

So I open up and let her have me. “What if? What if the plane goes down? Or we get devoured by grizzly bears? Anything can happen, Eve.”

 

Her lips part and she stares at me as she thinks about what I’ve said. “I know what you’re doing.”

 

“What am I doing?”

 

“You’re being honest with me.”

 

“Shouldn’t I be?”

 

She just smiles knowingly and uncrosses her legs under the table. “I’m onto you.”

 

“I want you to be.” I smirk, and the man on the intercom announces that our boarding has commenced. So we leave money on the table and trudge our way away from this wretched place.

 

* * *

 

It is midnight, and most people are sleeping. We are somewhere halfway over the Atlantic. I am wide awake from the pleasant nap I got on the flight from Rome. Eve’s eyes are closed, but I know she can’t fall asleep.

 

Our layover in Madrid was anxiously short, but better that way because it meant less time for anyone to find out we had arrived. Thank goodness we are flying an actual airline to America, too. The last one smelled like vomit; I need a shower.

 

None of the movie options appeal to me, so I watch the little image of the plane traverse a sea of blue on the seatback monitor and let the roar of jet engines give me low-level hearing damage. I gave Eve the window seat, and she slumps against the textured plastic, leaning so far away from me that you’d think I had Ebola or something. But she is still here. She refused to let us take first class, and I am not in the business of denying her what she wants right now.

 

I sigh ostentatiously because I am getting a little bored and restless. She stirs. When she looks at me, her eyes are alert. I don’t know why she bothered trying to sleep. 

 

“Are we there yet?” she says in a low monotone.   
  
“Depends what you mean by ‘there’.”

 

Again, she seems to forget this train of thought entirely. She pulls her hands out from where they were tucked between her legs and turns towards me and grasps the armrest. “Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome,” I reply, not entirely sure what she is referring to. Well, in a way, I am, but I don’t want her to know that.

 

“I keep thinking of where I could be right now. Dead, of course. Or left for dead with Aaron. Or home and Nico is doing his rage-face at me. Or, worst of all, listening to Carolyn tell me how much I’ve disappointed her.”

 

“You’re not. You are here. You have to stop thinking of the alternatives, Eve.”

 

“I know,” she says, like she is afraid that she doesn’t know. “I have to stop thinking. That’s when I get... I don’t know. That’s when I start forcing myself into being rational. Into thinking about what is normal, and trying as hard as I can to be that mold.”

 

I let her finish.

 

“None of those alternatives matter. They aren’t real. Like you said, the plane could go down.”

 

I am happy that nobody is awake to hear this talk of planes going down. Right now would probably be the worst time for someone to think we are terrorists.

 

“For all my investigating and rationalizing and treating you like a puzzle, I can’t deny what you did to me. You taught me something. When you said you didn’t feel. My memories came back to me at the worst times, like I was vomiting them up, and they just kept coming and do you know what I realized? None of them. Not one of them. Made me feel a fraction of what you did.” Her fist clenches and she corrects herself. “What you do. Not my wedding day, not when I graduated, nothing. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to have to keep being numb. I’m done. I’m here. And I want to feel everything I can.”

 

I can’t say anything. I can only stare, and watch her go through it. Watch her come back.

 

“Sorry,” she mutters, though she obviously doesn’t mean it. “I just had to get that off my chest. Maybe I can actually sleep now.”

 

My hand finds her knee once more. “Do you want to?”

 

She inhales sharply. “No.”

 

I know where she would rather be. Warmth travels up my thighs and I feel drunk. Do you know what else isn’t fair, Eve? That I had to wait so long for you.

 

I reach up and press the flight attendant button. When he arrives, I am overly polite, which is hard to do because his uniform is absolutely atrocious. “Yeah, can I please have a blanket? I’m really cold...” My American accent sounds utterly normal to me, having used it so much lately. He gives me a thin, navy blanket and I thank him sweetly.

 

Eve raises her eyebrow at me. “I didn’t peg you for someone who gets cold easily.”

 

“Oh, Eve. You’re so funny.” The armrest folds up quietly, and I drape the blanket over both of us and make a show of stretching and pulling it over my arms. Eve is very still. I don’t think her and Nico ever did anything fun.

 

I lean over and whisper in her ear. “Please don’t be too loud. I don’t think everyone else would appreciate that.”

 

When I pull my lips away, her head follows, and lands on my shoulder. She doesn’t lay in my lap, or spread her legs wide, or do anything out of the ordinary. Her eyes are closed, and she tilts her head up just enough so I can see her mouth ask me  _ please. _

 

If I were one of those lucky people who could come from words alone, that probably would have done it for me. But I am not. So I find her hand with mine and stroke along the sharp bones of her thumb until she grabs my fingers and shoves them towards the waistband of her pants.

 

It’s a long flight, though, so I can’t help but tease her a little. I can feel her heartbeat on me increasing as I run my finger just underneath the elastic, moving back and forth between her hipbones. My other hand wanders down between my own legs, outside the knit of my pants that somehow transmits sensation just as well as if I was wearing nothing at all. I don’t rub myself or anything. I just want to feel the fabric soaking through.

 

Eve is not patient. Her hips draw forward, trying to force my hand down. “Eve,” I chastise her in the lowest whisper, “is that really what you want?” 

 

She elbows me in the ribs. It even hurts a little. I think I have to reward her for being so forthcoming with what she wants that she is willing to bruise me for it.

 

So, as languidly as I can, I trail my fingers deeper, still over her underwear because I know that it will drive her crazy. Never mind what it is doing to me. Her legs part a bit more, and I know that she needs it. It almost makes me consider stopping, just to be mean. But that would leave me even less satisfied than her.

 

As I brush over her clit, around and around, her hand wanders over to my thigh and grips me hard. I never realized how strong her hands are. No wonder I like her so much. I hope she leaves marks... I imagine what they would look like, and how beautiful I would look with them. This breaks free my flood and my imagination takes control of me. The thought of having me inside her mouth, and her hearing me whimper, and thrusting into me as hard as she can and-

 

And then I am thinking about the last time she was inside of me, with that knife, and my angry heart surges forth, wanting its revenge in pleasure. I want to stab her, too. I don’t bother reaching slowly anymore. I yank aside the crotch of her underwear and push inside and I have found heaven and the airline company should be very glad to have leather seats because I have made a mess.


	3. Chapter 3

It is by favor to Eve alone that I wait until we check into the hotel by the airport, rather than pulling her into the nearest bathroom stall after we exited the gate in Juneau. This is one of those days where my self-control is nonexistent. In an earlier life, that would have meant death and money, or perhaps a quick hookup, or all of the above. But Eve has taught me the value of patience.

 

The hotel room is dark, though it is afternoon. It has been a long time since my days were so dim and my nights darker. But I don’t allow the memory to pull me back.

 

Eve flicks on the lights; the room looks worse illuminated. Is everything in Alaska made to look like a log cabin just to be cute? 

 

We don’t have bags so there is nothing to unpack. There is nothing to do except the obvious. This sudden lack of movement, the finality of knowing where we will be for even the next night, makes me anxious. Eve moves to lay down on the bed. I don’t let her accept this terrifying stagnation.

 

As quickly as if I were striking her, I take her arm and pull her into the bathroom, which is brighter and warmer but just as depressingly kitschy as the rest of the hotel. She responds in kind, contrary to my expectation. She tries to kiss me but I angle my face down, watching her hands clutch at my waist, and I can feel her hot breath on my cheekbone. Her eyes are open, too.

 

This feels...  _ new _ to me. Or perhaps old, ancient, instinctive.

 

It is like what we did on the airplane never happened, and she is pure, virginal for one final moment, in need of devouring. Violence flashes in my veins; I want nothing more than to defile her.

 

I switch the shower on and pull off my clothes while she stands and waits. I wonder whether she just doesn’t know what to do - she doesn’t know how to touch me, she doesn’t know in which ways women are allowed to touch other women, she is afraid of me - or if she truly does wish to feel innocent. To feel like she is my latest victim. I hope it is this option. 

 

When I am naked and the bathroom has filled with steam, I motion to her. “Come here,” I command, all traces of sweetness gone from my voice.

 

She doesn’t move.

 

“You wanted this, Eve.”

 

“I...” She looks vaguely ashamed.

 

I step forward and grab her neck. Not hard enough to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt her. But I do want her to wonder whether I will or not. I push her to her knees.

 

“V-Villanelle-”

 

“Don’t tell me you changed your mind.”

 

Her eyes are wide, but I know she can breathe just fine. My other hand moves slowly to my pussy. I know her eyes wish to follow it rather than holding my gaze, but Eve is determined.

 

She doesn’t reply to me, but still her mouth hangs open. If she is not hungry for words, she must be wanting of something else.

 

“You owe me,” I say, and force her head in.

 

She struggles to get out of my grip, but I don’t let her move. I push her lower, between my legs, and spread myself over her face; her mouth is closed like she doesn’t want me infecting her but I know how badly she wants to taste me. When I rub my lips over hers, I can feel them parting, trying desperately to stay closed. The pull of skin on skin is like tectonic plates crashing against each other. The earthquake fumbles through my body, the vibrations meet their match in my throat.

 

I allow myself a glance down as I rock my hips over her face. Eve still looks so stubborn, so determined to resist me, but one of her hands clutches at her thigh. I can’t help but picture her rubbing herself raw from the thought of me using her, and my eyes sink shut so I can see the fantasy better. I am not ready for what it will feel like once she is actually trying.

 

And I think she is starting to give up. She whimpers like she is afraid, and her breathing is ragged from me cutting off every inhale. Her other hand trails up the back of my bare leg like fire catching gasoline, and I wonder if she is going to finger me or squeeze my ass or dig her nails into me to try and get away again. But it keeps moving up, around my hip, over the sensitive thin skin of my stomach, and I shudder and stop my pendulum motion over her mouth. Finally, she finds where my scar still marks me, puckered and ragged, and she digs her finger in just enough to set ablaze the memory. 

 

And then she opens up. As if I needed a reminder of the control she has over me.

 

The shift is dramatic. Gone is the meek and submissive Eve that she used to pretend to be, and that she still apparently likes to play at. The woman below me is not her - she sucks at me, tongues at my clit, slips inside of me to coat herself in my wetness like she’s been in my head all along, spying on my subconscious, taking careful notes of what precisely it takes to render me, too, a different person. To find that feral, violent part of me and show me that it is the  _ only  _ real part of me. That she is not the only one who feigns at a construct every day. That I am not merely a person who kills, but a  _ killer. _

 

That I am an animal and she is my master.

 

The thought makes me want to scream and the noises Eve is making as she drags my soul out into the open fill my ears, and I know she is touching herself, and phantom pain spreads like malice once more from where she first showed me what she was really made of. I am coming apart at the seams and all is haze; my skin is flushed and angry from the steam and my nerves aren’t working, and just when I think I’m at the point of implosion... she draws back.

 

I open my eyes, with difficulty. I have made a mess of her. Her hair is frizzy, her face soaked in whitish-clear, her eyes have watered from her refusal of air. She is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen. Though I cannot deny that I am the one who has been ruined.

 

She peers up at me unblinking. 

 

“You’re right. This is exactly what I wanted.” Her tone is as cold and professional as it would be announcing my death at some sterilized MI6 press conference.

 

My inhale is more of a whimper than a breath. I would let her leave right now. I would drown myself in the bathtub if she told me to.

 

Eve is less cruel than I, though. That, or she knows that she has destroyed me and wants to stick around to see the ash fall.

 

She nestles herself back in and lays like a contented cat upon my pubic hair for a moment. She is sweet again, waiting for me to hurt her, waiting for my revenge, so regretful, so ashamed for being controlled by her own desires. She wants my forgiveness.

 

But of course it is a ruse.

 

Her darkness returns, and I am the one gasping,  _ “Eve, Eve,”  _ as her teeth trail over my clit and her tongue flutters against me once more and I collapse into oblivion.

 

* * *

 

We do, actually, make use of the shower. I don’t like to waste water.

 

This is probably the first time we have acted like lovers and not like adversaries. I wash my hair, and we wash her hair, and my mouth tastes like soap now because I couldn’t wait for the water to wash it away. My instinct has died down; my kill is hidden away for later. I know I will hunger again soon. 

 

I’m not sure which Eve is present with me in the shower. She wants me, it is undeniable. But she doesn’t try to hurt me like she did before. Perhaps she has finally measured out a level where we can simply exist. 

 

I don’t want to wish for that. I don’t want to just exist. I don’t want to ever have to act like a human being, or consider what I look like to others, or reach for anything short of exactly what I want.

 

If I have to do that for Eve, I will. But if I can, I will take the temper out of her. We will be destructive, selfish, bloody animals, and we will be one.

 

When we get out, it is so humid that we don’t really dry. The fantasy has gotten to me, and we traipse to the single window and throw open the curtains, willing for the moon to see our thoughtless pleasure. 

 

I kiss up Eve’s jawline and she giggles as if drunk. We have barely said a word to each other, and yet I feel as if we have traversed worlds through spit and cum and breath alone. We fall onto the bed, though this time it feels like less of an acceptance of stagnation and more of a step forwards in a journey - one we’re far into in miles, yet still inchoate in feeling.

 

She is on top of me, and my head falls back and I can feel her wet hair dripping onto my cheek, and it makes me smile. 

 

“Eve,” I say, tongue trailing over the edge of my teeth. I echo her giggle. “I... I don’t know what I was going to say. Would you kiss me again?” I’m talking like a fourteen-year-old who just read Romeo and Juliet and thinks she is in love with her first boyfriend. 

 

She doesn’t acquiesce, but collapses over my shoulder and rolls onto her back. I can feel her smile radiating off of her. I suppose our one try at fun kinky shit was enough for her for one night. No matter, I know it will come back.

 

“Do you want to know something funny?” she asks. 

 

I grab her hand, unwilling to let her go for another moment. “You were a virgin before you met me?”

 

She elbows me hard but laughs. “Well... no, but I did marry the first man I ever slept with.”

 

“How many women? Or otherwise?”

 

“Ha. None.” 

 

“It doesn’t show.” I’m trying to make her feel better, but I do really mean it.

 

She takes a big breath. “I failed, big time, at all of my attempts not to picture doing things to you.”

 

I feel myself growing warm again; evidently my one orgasm wasn’t even close to enough for tonight. “Oh? And did it go like you thought it would?”

 

“No. I thought I would be the one holding you down. And I would be guilt-tripping you the whole time for all of the fucking awful things you’ve done. And you would get off on that, and promise me that you’d never hurt anyone again, and that I would be the reason you stopped all of it. I could feel the... the  _ valor _ of having prevented you from taking more lives through my own feminine wiles. Obviously, that sounds hilariously dumb for me to say out loud.”

 

I break out into a fit of my own giggles. And then I roll on top of her and kiss her more so she knows that she was right the whole time. Because I do not think I can admit it in words.

 

Whether it is from the thought of owing her, or from wishing to taste her once more (I sucked my fingers clean on the airplane, but there is only so much of that one can do without getting strange looks) I cannot stay at her mouth very long. I trail my kisses down, trying to resist myself from biting her, and suck on a nipple until I feel her shiver beneath me, then continue down to rest my head on her leg. 

 

I look at her pussy like it is in a museum. She is up on her elbows, now, watching me watch her. She is even more of a control freak than I am. 

 

My index finger strokes down, but I am exploring rather than trying to make her come. I stroke the skin around with my thumb while my fingers claw gently at her ass, pressing into the muscle before getting dangerously close to her asshole. (Surely she hasn’t done anything there, and I laugh internally at the thought of Nico asking for it and her refusing, scandalized.) And then I don’t think I can wait any longer, because she is perfect, and I think I would live on her alone if I could.

 

She makes no attempt to be quiet, and my smile spreads as my tongue strokes quickly up and up and in. I keep thinking of what she did to me, and I let my head tip to the side like I, too, am drunk, and French kissing her pussy like I have never done this before. Every time I hear her whine, I do whatever I was doing even more.

 

I press my first finger inside of her and curl it upwards and she tightens around me, so I put another one in and thrust them in more deeply. Once we are done I will be looking for sex shops in Juneau because I don’t know how much longer I can last without fucking her harder. The way her moans fill my ears make me believe that we can, actually, last forever doing this and nothing more out here in this wilderness.

 

Maybe I am just especially skilled, but she comes faster than anyone else I’ve ever fucked. I suck my fingers dry once more and lick up what has dribbled from her pussy downwards. She barely moves once the aftershock has subsided, and I look over to the grimy alarm clock on the bedside table. 2:02AM. We’ve been traveling for over two days now.

 

I crawl back up to where she now lays, quiet and drained, and shut off the lamp. I know she is probably ready to go to sleep immediately, but I kiss her anyway, so she can taste how deeply I worship her.

 

“Goodnight, Villanelle,” she murmurs.

 

“Goodnight, Eve.”

 

I wrap my arms around her but lay awake for far too long. I feel like we have only scratched the surface. The water is dark, and my eyes are weak, and I know that monsters lurk down there. I only hope that they welcome me as I welcome them.


	4. Chapter 4

I don’t feel the cold, but the heater in the car has been turned all the way up for the duration of our drive. At best, the cabin we’ve parked in front of can be described as decrepit. It is a temporary rental. I’m not sure whether she expected me to get us something more permanent right away. (When would I have done that? I’m not exactly mortgage material.)

 

Even without the logistical concerns, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It would take away all of the ambiguity, make us unbeholden to anyone but ourselves. With that much freedom, we would become lost in time. The only reminder that time still existed would be our gentle aging, and that was a long way off. Drifting away takes commitment, and I was always afraid of that. So I built in a failsafe with the cabin and the car. I had only rented each for a few days. If we did not bring the car back, then it would be because we are never going back.

 

Eve exits the compact sedan in a hurry. “Are you sure this is even livable?” she challenges me. “And, you know, I’m not going to get tetanus the moment I touch something?”

 

I wonder if she really wants me to answer her, or if the words are just meaningless remnants of her lingering ties to reality. Or if she has finally began to figure out what I have known all along. I feel like bringing her here to the edge of everything, as literally as I could have done, should have made it obvious. 

 

That, or I am thinking too much, and it is just her sense of humor shining through at me.

 

It was a long drive out here and I know that I am not thinking straight. The snow-drifted plains are dark and look like they were sculpted by a bored god trying to discern just what arrangement would blow the most cold air into town. In the distance, the mountains ignore our petty drama. I feel entrenched in fantasy. Leave it to Eve to do her best to pull me out of it.

 

“Airbnb said it has running water,” I respond coyly. I am not lying, but feel like I, too, am joking. These human concerns feel like those of ants; I feel more kinship with that bored god than I do with the fellow human beings I paid a hundred and eighteen dollars a night to for the cabin.

 

Eve gives me a dirty look and leaves me at the car. The path to the cabin is shoveled, and I think this proves to her that this is an actual abode, however shabby, and I have not taken her out all this way just to leave her for dead in a rickety shack. I follow her quickly and we ascend the icy stairs to the front door in silence. The key is under a whitewashed Adirondack chair on the porch that would certainly collapse if I sat on it.

 

Inside is a respite from the harsh wind but I feel ill at ease. The fireplace roars and errant flames lick a teal-enameled kettle suspended over it. I have a feeling that this cabin has seen far more vodka than tea.

 

Despite the ample cuddling opportunity that winter provides, I momentarily wish we had arrived in summer instead. The fireplace has given me ideas. Ideas involving freeing it to dance wildly over the plains, rendering everything that god created null.

 

But Eve is acting as normal as she could, and once again seizes me from my fantasies. She puts the bag of winter clothing we bought in Juneau on the single chair and opens a plastic water bottle and drinks nearly the whole thing. Other than the bare essentials, the cabin is empty. Nothing here to do but drink and fuck and listen to the wolves howl. The unspoken question “now, what?” hangs heavy in the air.

 

I don’t know “now, what?”. I don’t know what to do. I didn’t expect everything to be this easy. I expected to be dead by now.

 

I suppose Eve and I really are as unimportant as I had hoped. Or - more likely - everyone is certain that we’ve already killed each other.

 

I have no idea when their prediction will come true.

 

* * *

 

My dreams are stained red and I keep waking; the air is all wrong. We fell asleep peacefully, talking about the future. How spring will come soon. Eve admitted to me that she misses working, and I confess that I do too. 

 

We discuss the opportunities available to us like they are potential conclusions for the storybook we are writing together. We are novice authors, but we are well-read, and we know how it should go. 

 

The primary objective is to give the readers enough information so that they know the beloved couple will live on in ecstatic harmony together. The “figurative orgasm of the soul in eternity” I posit, and it makes Eve laugh like a hyena. We have to be convincing. Think of a  _ realistic,  _ straight, narrow, visible path to continue on. Determine which routine is so perfectly optimized that it requires no further thinking and certainly no change. Sure, it is an end, but we are good enough to instill faith in our readers that  _ we _ will live on, right?

 

I don’t know. I have my doubts as to whether it will work. Because I see a problem. Faith is a concept constructed by the fearful. When you live in its absence, it is easy to see: once the words run out, we cease to exist. The memory of us fades. We aren’t working at a gas station or opening a vegan bakery or conning tourists out of their money. Those are fictions. The reality is that we dissolve into nothingness.

 

But we are not there yet. I’m awake, staring into the darkness, imagining spiders crawling on the ceiling spinning webs that grow larger and larger until we, too, are trapped in them. Eve breathes so slowly.

 

I shiver and get out of bed, abandoning our bear’s den. There is not much to explore in the tiny cabin, but I am nosy, and scouring every inch of the place might quell my prickling anxiety enough to sleep.

 

Not wishing to wake Eve, I leave the lights off, and look with my hands and the few struggling rod cells in my eyes that are picking up enough light to distinguish solid objects from empty air. Some of the coals in the fireplace are still glowing. The quietness hurts my eardrums, and I wish the wolves were howling. I guess they are off elsewhere tonight.

 

The room is comprised of our double bed (its heavy wooden posts would make for a good surface to smash a head on), a two-person table that smells like fish (the legs would come off easily and make a decent bat), a minifridge covered in questionable right-wing stickers (the edges of its door are sharp, if the message alone isn’t enough), one set of kitchen cabinets (surely there are glasses and knives in there), and the aforementioned fire (quite obvious what one could do with that).

 

The fridge is empty and doesn’t have an internal light. In the upper kitchen cabinet there are mugs and dusty cups and plates. The drawer has mismatched utensils and knives only suitable for gutting fish. And the lower cabinet has a single cast-iron pot and a shotgun. 

 

It is wedged in awkwardly at an angle because it is really too large to be stored in such a place. I pull it out; it is loaded. There is a tag on it that I can barely read in the darkness. “In case of bears.”

 

I smile to myself, leave the gun out on the kitchen table, and get back into bed. 

 

* * *

 

We make use of what the cabin is good for. Even when it seems kinky, our sex has grown comfortable. I surprise her with a hit that is just a little too hard, she pretends she doesn’t want it, I tie her up and keep going until I cannot tell if her begging me to stop is fake or not. But it is the same thing over and over. Her desire to dominate me has faded. I suppose it is because she has already done it so well that she need not simulate it on our rickety bed. The feeling of killing seems so foreign to me now. We have left the shotgun out on the table to remind us of what we have done.

 

I don’t know how many days it has been. I haven’t been hungry. I am a vampire, and the blood in Eve’s body, though it still pumps smooth and strong within her, sustains me. Heaven is maddening. My god is all-powerful and worshipping her is my only action.

 

We sleep a lot, too; it is hard to do much else when the sun is so weak. Or maybe I should say that Eve sleeps a lot, because I am restless. My bones itch. I have learned that apparently, I am very susceptible to cabin fever.

 

One night I am dreaming that I am back in Paris. It is my old apartment, and my belongings are all there but shifted around slightly. It is neater than I usually kept it. When I walk into my bedroom, the floor collapses out from under me, and suddenly I am in the famous catacombs. This room, however, has no exit. No way for curious delinquent ghost-hunting teens to get in. Here, I recognize all of the skulls. I touch them and they are warm. This feels more like my home.

 

I am cursed so these warm things cannot last. I wake. But I feel like the dream has not ended.

 

Blindly I put on my boots and coat and hurry outside. The frigid air burns my face but I am searching, stumbling out towards the mountains where the iced-over snow breaks under my feet every few steps. Still my hungry legs won’t stop pulling me forwards. Loss is the only thing I haven’t numbed to and I don’t even know what it is that I crave, only that I will die to find it.

 

Like a flashlight the aurora flickers to life above me and it cooly reflects off something I had missed in my fury. My heart jumps and I go to attend to it.

 

Even in the darkness I can see the red. Sprawled out before me is a grey wolf, torn open so aggressively that its insides lay more on the snow than within its body. The snout is left in an eternal snarl. I crouch by it. It cannot have been dead for long because some of its blood is still liquid. I have the insatiable, embarrassing desire to wrap myself in its pelt and cease to be Villanelle. 

 

There is a lapse in the wind and I look up, ashamed. I have not traveled far from the cabin. There is a figure on the porch. It is Eve, casually leaning against the rifle propped up on the floor. Her eyes say “come here”.

 

I can’t move. I can’t do anything at all. Death and life have become the same for me.


End file.
